


Leave Me

by MelyndaR



Series: Breaking series [2]
Category: Victorious
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 05:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3162650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelyndaR/pseuds/MelyndaR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Andre finds her in the alley, Tori just wants him and the rest of the world to leave her alone, particularly her friends and family. Now they just have to hang around long enough for her to be okay with the fact that they're not willing to do that, regardless of whether or not she has any intention of giving away the secret of what truly happened to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tori

Tori Vega stood in a dimly lit alley a block away from Maestro's with Andre Harris, the boy's black suit jacket covering her otherwise bare shoulders. Andre stood with his back to the dead body of the man that Tori had been forced to stab in the heart for self-defense's sake, guarding her from the sight that they both knew would be hard for anyone to look at, let alone the currently fragile singer. As an extra precaution, Tori stood with her forehead leaning against the other wall of the brick building, her back to Andre, not wanting to see neither the body nor the boy. She didn't particularly want him to see her in her current state either, but it couldn't be helped at the moment, and she was glad for his presence.

"I called the other guys," Andre offered to her across the thick air between them. "And the cops. They should all be here in a minute."

Tori nodded, the skin of her forehead scraping uncomfortably against the brick as she did so. "Okay," she croaked out, looking warily down at the state of her dress.

Obeying the now-dead man in his order to take it off had saved it from being actually torn, which was good; it had only suffered from laying in the mud and dirt of the alleyway before she had wrestled the knife away from the man, stabbed him, and then scrambled back into her violated clothing before calling out to Andre.

_Violated…_

Tori screwed her eyes tightly closed; taking a few deep breaths to reign in the tears that were threatening to emerge again.

"Tori?" Andre asked carefully, and she heard the crunch of the broken asphalt under his feet that meant that he had stepped up to stand behind her.

He placed a hand on her shoulder and she shuddered. The physical contact that she had welcomed only a few minutes ago as verification of another safe human being in the vicinity now made her stomach clench.

"Please don't touch me," she whispered, her request barely audible.

"You know that I won't hurt you, right?" Andre asked her softly.

Tori nodded, her throat to tightly constricted to allow for any speaking.

"Tori?" Andre spoke carefully again and she flinched, knowing what it was that he was going to try to ask her. "That guy-"

"He wanted my purse," Tori chocked out the easy lie.

Though she still had her back turned to him, she could practically  _feel_  him relax behind her as he released the breath that he had apparently been holding and replied with a tone of thinly veiled great relief. "Oh; alright."

So he had already guessed the unthinkably awful truth. Hopefully she had through him off the trail – forever, if she had her way. After all, no one really had to know the truth behind what had just happened to her.

"You probably should have just given him your bag," Andre said, sounding almost at a loss for what to say, and he shifted from foot to foot as they waited for the others to arrive.

Tori opened her mouth to give a reply – probably another lie – that she hadn't yet formulated, but Beck and Jade ran up just then, saving her from having to speak.

"Are you two okay?" Beck asked in between gasps for air as he tried to catch his breath.

Tori turned around to face the trio of her friends, Andre answered, "I'm fine," but he looked at her uncertainly, clearly unsure of how she was doing.

"I'm fine," Tori lied, and she surprised herself with how convincing it sounded, even to her own ears. "I'm just a little shaken up is all."

Beck released a deep, relieved breath, much as Andre had a moment before. "Good."

Jade just stayed silent for a moment, staring at her through slightly narrowed eyes. It was the same look that Tori had seen in her eyes when they sat at their desks in math class, and Jade was faced with a problem that she had already worked, but knew to be incorrect. Somehow, Jade had to know that Tori was lying, and she was trying to piece together the truth.

"Where'd the guy go that grabbed you?" an unsuspecting Beck asked.

Tori turned a little green as both she and Andre pointed to the body in the shadows of the alley.

"Dude!" Jade gasped, finally breaking her streak of silent contemplation as she took a couple of steps toward the body. Beck reached out and grasped her arm when she was only a few steps away from him, keeping her from going any further. Tori was glad; she doubted that the sight of the still-bleeding dead man was one that even Jade would want to see – at least up close and in this setting. The Goth seemed a little in awe of Tori in the moment as she asked, "How the… Why… What did he want?"

Tori barely refrained from flinching when she was asked that question again. Again she lied simply, "My purse."

"The guy had to drag you a block away to get your purse from you?" Beck asked with raised eyebrows.

Tori gulped, realizing that he had found a loophole in her story. "I guess he knew there would be more people in the parking lot?" she fished for a reasonable excuse, and that one didn't sound too bad.

Beck still looked unconvinced, but no one of the three said much else because Robbie and Cat ran up just then. Psychowits was right behind them and a cop car pulled in beside the teacher. Tor's heart slammed in her throat for the tenth time that night as the possibility hit her just moments before the actual man emerged from the patrol car.

Her father.

Tori Vega loved her father dearly and he loved her just as much. As a general rule, this was a good and wonderful thing, but there was one drawback to being Daddy's little girl.

He always knew when she was lying.

 


	2. Officer David Vega

Tori's heart slammed repeatedly into her ribcage, beating so loud that she was certain that her father had to be able to hear it as he jogged to her and embraced her tightly.

"Are you okay?" he asked anxiously.

Tori wanted to be able relax, to melt into the hug of her father, of all people, but she couldn't. Not here, not yet, and certainly not when she knew that her lies were going to come crashing down at her feet. They were all going to find out what the man had done to her – right here, right now, even her closest friends were going to hear everything.

"Tori?" David Vega repeated, leaning away from his daughter so that he could look her in the face when he didn't answer his simple inquiry. "Are you alright, sweetheart?" It was then that the cop side of her father kicked in, and in one swift sweep of his gaze he took in her stiffness to his touch and the state of her dress and expression before finally landing on the man that she had fatally stabbed. He left one arm around her shoulders as he turned to his partner, saying, "Hey, Michaelson? My little girl's pretty shook up; I'm going to go sit with her in the patrol car and get her statement there, okay?"

Michaelson glanced over at them from where he stood, already asking Andre and Beck questions, and nodded. "Fine by me."

David sighed, steering Tori towards the cop car. A medic from the ambulance that had just pulled up stopped father and daughter, saying that they needed to check her out before she went anywhere. Officer Vega explained that he was just going to let her sit in the patrol car and calm down while he got her statement, and then she would be right back. Thus, the medic moved out of their path and Tori found herself sitting in the back of the patrol car in one seat while her father sat directly beside her.

"Tori," David said, his tone heartrendingly mellow as he stated softly. "Sweetheart, what happened out there?"

"He wanted my purse," Tori lied for the third time.

"Regardless of what your friends might fall for, I know that crooks don't make you walk a block away – much less into a dark and secluded alley – just so that they can take your purse and run." He ground his jaw for a moment, eyes unreadable and dark as he gazed at his hands, before stating matter-of-factly, each word obviously painful to him, "Whoever he is, he didn't want a purse. He wanted you."

Tori flinched, unable to hold back more sobs as they grated against her throat. She wasn't sure how she got back into her dad's arms, whether he gathered her to him or she flung herself into them, but one way or the other she ended up there, hands fisted in his navy blue uniform shirt, face burrowed in his shoulder. Speaking around her bouts of crying, she poured out the whole awful story from why she had been called upon to sing at Maestro's, to going back for her abandoned purse, to the moment when the police car had pulled onto the scene. By the time she was done telling her story, she realized that her dad was crying into her hair.

"Daddy," she couldn't remember the last time she had called him that, but she did it now, still hiding her face in his shoulder, too exhausted to even try for any semblance of normalcy between them. "I want to go home now. Please. I need a shower."

Officer Vega sighed wearily, and when Tori sat up and looked at his face, he appeared to have aged ten years while he listened to what had happened to her. "I know you do, baby, but I want the medics to check you out before we leave."

"Won't they be able to tell what he did to me?" she murmured, finding it easier to keep her gaze on her hands rather than his pained expression.

He paused, skirting the question with the answer of "I just want to know that you're okay."

She could've easily told him the answer to that question. No, she wasn't okay. Of course she wasn't okay, not after the events of this evening.

"If you don't let them check you out," he said, seeming to see straight through to the shame and fear that shrouded her. "It'll seem more suspicious then whatever they find when they do check you out."

Still, Tori couldn't move. She didn't want to leave the comfort of her father, the security of the small back seat of the car.

"No one outside of the police, the medics, and maybe some doctors will see anything that the medics write, Tori. The medics may ask you to go to the hospital, but even if they do, unless there's something that I don't know about, you should be able to come home tonight."

He paused before adding, "Sweetie, there's going to be some more cops showing up here now, a lot more people actually, since there's a dead body here. Do you want to get out of here before they all start showing up, or do you want to sit here for a couple more minutes and pull yourself together?"

Tori took a deep breath, forcing herself to "get it together" as he had phrased it, and then said, "I'm ready to get out."

"Do you want me to come with you now, or at all, or in a few minutes?"

She glanced at him, realizing what the answer that he needed her to give was, and giving it accordingly. "In a few minutes is just fine, Dad."

Officer Vega nodded and then watched his daughter as she climbed out of the car, making her way straight to the ambulance, her very stance giving off a stay-away-from-me vibe to the five pairs of eyes that simultaneously swung to watch her as she made the short trek from vehicle to vehicle. Her poor friends were obviously worried for her, but he knew from seeing an atrociously countless number of victims of this particular crime that she was going to be slow to let at least the better half of those five friends know what had gone on, if she ever did. Andre, Beck, and Robbie might very well never know the truth, especially since Tori seemed to think that they had bought her purse-snatcher story. It seemed a small enough chance that she would tell Cat and Jade what had happened to her, let alone the male of the species, which she was currently trying to avoid as a whole, he noticed.

David Vega hung his head, breathing heavily. Yes, his daughter was seventeen. No, it wasn't necessarily a stretch to believe that she might soon lose her innocence, so to speak – but it wasn't supposed to have ever happened to either one of his children like this. Yes, he was a cop in Los Angeles. Yes, he saw things like this far too often. But never, not ever was he supposed to have to see his daughter go through this.

He put his head in his hands and wept.


	3. Trina

Trina felt nearly giddy with curiosity as she waited by herself in the Vega family's living room for her dad and Tori to come home. While taking a call from Trina and Tori's father who said that he had Tori in his police cruiser and was bringing her home, Mrs. Vega had burst into tears and barricaded herself in the bedroom that she shared with her husband. There had been more to the conversation on the phone – specifically, why exactly Tori had been arrested – but Trina hadn't been able to hear that part in her eavesdropping and the possibilities were driving her nuts. Whatever had happened, it must have been pretty bad to illicit that kind of a reaction from the practically unshakable Holly Vega.

Suddenly a car door slammed outside of their house, and Trina's eyes shot up from where she had been watching TV just as her dad came into the house with Tori trailing behind him, looking like somebody's lost and neglected puppy. If she felt as bad as she looked, Tori must have done something really off the charts while out with her friends.

"Where's your mother?" Officer Vega asked Trina, looking visibly drained.

Well, of course he was tired – he had to be horribly disappointed in his delinquent daughter. "She's upstairs in your room bawling her eyes out – the bedroom door is locked and everything," Trina answered, glancing between her dad and sister as she asked curiously, "What's going on?"

"Nothing, Trina," her dad answered, the stern tone of his voice catching her off-guard. He started to head up the staircase, saying, "I'm going to go check on your mother. Trina-" She looked innocently up at him as he ordered, "Be nice to your sister and  _leave her alone_ about this. You got it?"

David Vega had never spoken so sternly to her so that she remembered, nor had he ever been in such a bad mood in all of her recollection – but again, he had never arrested one of his own children before either.

Trina nodded obligingly. "Got it dad," she lied, waiting until he was out of earshot to bombard her sister with question. After all, the girl looked half dead, so this was bound to be good. "What the heck did you get yourself into that the cops had to show up? Especially Dad, of all people?" Tori didn't reply, just stood staring at the pack of a chair as Trina pressed, "Come on, what did you do?"

"I didn't do anything!" Tori insisted suddenly. "I was the victim here! And Dad showing up at the scene was just a fluke."

"Wait," Trina repeated, " _Scene_? As in  _crime scene_?"

"Leave me alone!" Tori screamed before suddenly springing into action and racing determinedly up the staircase saying, "I'm going to go take a shower."

Trina followed her; desperate to know what had occurred earlier in the night with her sister. Tori was quicker, though, and ran into the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind her before Trina could catch up with her. Trina huffed when she came face to face with the closed door, pouting a little as she backed away.

It was then that the low murmur of her parents' voices in the other room caught her ear. She crept silently closer to their barely ajar bedroom door, straining intently to catch what they were saying to one another.

"You told me that the dispatcher called it assault, right?" Trina heard her mother say. Officer Vega presumably nodded, because Mrs. Vega then desperately asked, "Then are you sure that it was  _that kind_ of assault?"

"She told me it was, Holly. Why would she tell me that the man had done that to her if he hadn't? And furthermore, why would she find it in herself to stab the man if she hadn't been in that desperate a situation? You and I both know Tori well enough to know that she wouldn't lie about something like that, let alone kill a man without having that sort of desperation to get away. She just wouldn't, and we both know it."

"Well…" Even without seeing her, Trina could tell that her mother was grasping at straws when she whispered softly to Trina's father, "What exactly did she tell you?"

"Holly…"

"Please, David, she's my little girl too; I need to know," came Mrs. Vega's painful insistence.

She heard her dad sigh heavily before he began to recount the story that he obviously didn't want to tell. Trina listened carefully, making sure that she didn't miss a word. Little by little, Trina found herself sliding down the wall as her mouth gaped and her heart began to pound with the horror of what she was hearing. Her poor sister!

When he was done telling his wife what had happened, the two of them remained silent in the room for a long moment while they both collected themselves before he said, "You need to go ahead and go to bed, Holly; I'm going to check on the girls and then I'll be back in, alright?"

Startled from her dazed numbness, Trina sprang up and darted into her room before her father could discover that she had been listening and heard every word that he had said.

Not a second after Trina had flopped into her bed pretending to be asleep did Officer Vega crack open her bedroom door and whisper her name. She mumbled incoherently, hoping to convince him that she had been sleeping soundly.

"I need to go be with your mother right now – this has hit her pretty hard; give Tori another minute and if she's not out of the shower by then, could you go check on her?"

Trina nodded, once again mumbling what she knew he would take as her agreement.

"Thank you. And, please, Trina, don't pester her about what's going on – trust me as the man who wants to protect you from life when I say that you don't want to know."

Trina nodded, biting her lip and wishing for once that she  _didn't_ know what she had just overheard.

"Alright."

Her father went to step out of her room, but Trina stopped him when she sprung out of bed and wrapped her arms around his neck, whispering, "You're a good dad, you know."

He smiled sadly, glassy eyes blinking back a sheen of tears. "Good night, sweetie."

"Good night," and then she added impulsively. "I love you."

"I love you girls too – more than you'll ever know."

With that he slipped down the hallway and into his bedroom. Trina shut the door to her own room and pulled on a pair of pajama pants, listening to the shower running. When it didn't stop before she threw her jeans in the dirty clothes basket, Trina went out into the hallway to fulfill her promise to her dad and knocked on the bathroom door.

Instantly the water was turned off, and Tori called out, "Just a minute."

Trina leaned against the wall of the hallway by the door, waiting for her sister to emerge. When after a number of minutes, Tori didn't come out, Trina knocked on the door again. "Tori?"

"I'll be out in a second."

Despite the reply, Trina cracked open the bathroom door and asked without looking, "Can I come in?"

"I don't care."

So Trina did, and what she saw made her want to cry even more then she had desired to the moment before. Her baby sister was sitting on the bathroom floor, her dark hair stringy and still dripping wet against her t-shirt and shorts and she was viciously scrubbing at her legs despite the fact that they were already red with rawness.

"Tori," Trina said gently, kneeling down beside her sister to capture the hand that held the washcloth. "Stop."

"I can't," Tori choked. "I'm still dirty… I still feel… He's still…"

"No," Trina said softly. "He's dead now, right?"

Tori looked over at her then as she nodded, and it was in that moment that Trina noticed that the water on her clothes wasn't coming from just her hair – she was also sobbing.

"I can still feel him though," Tori whispered brokenly.

Utter helplessness washed over Trina. The one time that she truly wanted to help her sister, and she had no idea how to go about doing it. Having no other ideas, Trina pulled her sister into her arms and held her close, letting her cry into the crook of her neck.

Trina began to cry too, letting the tears fall unheeded into her sister already wet hair.

After a moment, she began to sing softly through her tears, "I don't wanna make a scene  
I don't wanna let you down  
Tryin' to do my own thing,  
and I'm starting to figure it out  
That it's alright keep it together where ever we go  
And it's alright oh well whatever  
Everybody needs to know

You might be crazy  
have I told you lately  
That I love you  
You're the only reason that I'm not afraid to fly…"

After a few minutes, Trina realized that they had both stopped crying. Looking down at her, Trina saw that Tori was even asleep in her arms, using her lap as a pillow right there on the cold bathroom floor. Something told Trina that if she woke her sister now, the youngest Vega wouldn't be going back to sleep tonight. Sighing softly, Trina grabbed a couple of towels from the towel rack and draped one over Tori's midsection before fitting one around her shoulders and settling in for a long and uncomfortable night.


	4. Cat

"Hey, look!" Cat said excitedly, pointing to the brunette sisters walking through the door of Hollywood Arts High School two days later. "Tori's back!"

While Cat watched, Trina said something to her little sister and once Tori nodded repeatedly, the elder Vega walked away.

"Cat, maybe you should wait to go talk to Tori," suggested the boy to whom Cat had spoken – Robbie – but by the time that the five words had left his mouth, the redhead was already across the hall, throwing herself into the arms of the friend that they hadn't seen since that night they had went to Maestro's.

"I'm so glad you're back!" Cat squealed, wrapping Tori in a vicious bear hug.

"Hi, Cat," Tori said wearily, lightly snaking an arm around her tiny friend's shoulders without even squeezing in a return hug.

"Are you okay?" Cat asked with a frown, taking a step back. "You haven't been answering anybody's calls; we've all been worried about you." She pouted.

"I'm sorry if I worried you; I just haven't felt like talking."

"Oh," Cat said softly, still feeling worried for her friend.

She really looked kind of horrible, and Cat didn't know how to help since no one would tell her what had happened to Tori in the alley, although she knew that everyone else knew. Not even Robbie would talk to her about it though, no matter how much she tried to wear him down on the subject.

"Yeah," Tori answered, but then she seemed to force herself to perk up, saying, "But, hey, listen, I'm fine now; so you don't have to worry okay?"

Cat huffed to herself – she wished that people would quit telling her that she didn't have to worry all the time – but she didn't even have time to answer before Beck came up behind her.


	5. Beck

"You don't quite look 'okay,'" he pointed out to her gently, a frown tugging at the corners of his own lips. He was no idiot, and when he, Robbie, and Andre had sat down in Robbie's bedroom yesterday to put together the pieces of the puzzle, it hadn't taken a genius to figure out what had happened to their favorite Latina near Maestro's. "Are you sure that you need to be back at school already?"

Tori nodded, and he saw that she was trying to seem resolute when she said, "Yeah, of course. No biggie."

"Okay," Beck smiled gently at her, knowing better but letting her off the hook anyway.

Deciding to test the waters, he stepped up and gave her a side-hug as he said, "In that case, it's nice to have you back, then."

She tensed instantly, and Beck withdrew his arm as soon as he sensed her discomfort, mentally cursing. As much as he had hoped that they were wrong, he knew that Tori's reaction just now was going to be as much proof of what had happened to her as he, at least, was ever going to get. And her reaction spoke to the fact that the three boys had been right in their deduction.

For the rest of the school day, all of her friends watched Tori closely, both to gauge her behavior and state of mind and to ward off any of the kids that might want to talk to her about her ordeal. By the end of the day, Beck Oliver was entirely certain that, unfortunately, he and Andre were right.

Poor Andre had been a wreck as well, though, Beck noticed. Not that he blamed his best friend. When that had been him four years ago, he had been a mess for a long while. Andre had been the one to find Tori, and besides that, Beck had long known that he had entertained feelings for the Latina. What had happened to her was hitting Andre pretty hard too.

For that reason, he decided that he would discuss the boys' theory with Jade first before he brought it back up to Andre or even Robbie.


	6. Jade

"What did you think of Tori today?" Beck asked, paying as keen attention to the conversation that he was starting with his girlfriend as he did the road ahead of him as he drove her home from school.

Jade sighed, looking out the passenger side window before Beck noticed that for once she felt truly bad for the friend of hers that she loved to hate. "You know what that freak did to her, right?" she asked hollowly.

She saw Beck flinch out of the corner of her eye as he said in a low voice, "You know that we can only speculate – and maybe we shouldn't even be doing that."

Jade turned to look at him sharply, knowing that he would know what she referenced when she said, "Trust me, Beck, we both know what he did to her. You know what that much sudden damage in a girl means."

"Yeah," he said raggedly, neither one of them wanting to revisit the memories that this was bringing back from the proverbial grave.

"How's Andre holding up?" Jade asked.

"His girlfriend was-" There was an edge to his voice that Jade had halfway been expecting, but he cut off his response suddenly, not able to bring himself to finish the awful statement. "How do you recall the boyfriend holding up when that happens to his girl?"

"They're not a couple, Beck," she reminded him. "Don't try to turn them into us, it'll make what's going on now worse than what it already is and we both know that."

Beck glanced at her sharply before turning his eyes back to the road as he said, "He loves her, she loved him, and everybody with eyesight knows it. That means that the same emotions are running through his head that have run through mine in the past."

"So is he okay?" Jade repeated her earlier question.

"As well as can be expected, I guess," Beck answered before pointing out, "You never answered my question about Tori."

"I've been trying not to think about it," Jade admitted softly, her gaze falling to her hands.

Knowing full well what was actually going through her head, Beck reached across the console and took her hand in his.

Jade took a deep breath, adding bravely, "But she's tough when she wants to be; Tori will be alright, and so will Andre. We all will be."

Beck squeezed her hand, understanding the subtext of the statement, and Jade returned the gesture, wanting the contact instead of shying away from it like Tori had become prone to doing.

Jade smiled to herself as Beck lovingly murmured, "That's my girl."


	7. Robbie

Robbie didn't like the position that he had been put in – the one that Beck had pretty much put him in, come to think of it. Beck, Jade, Andre, and Robbie had all decided amongst themselves that night at Maestro's that whatever had happened to Tori, Cat didn't need to know about it – she needed to be shielded from it at all cost. Between the history of mental problems in the Valentine family, Cat's mostly controlled bipolar disorder, and the girl's innate innocence, the four friends had decided that it would be a bad decision to let Cat in on any information that they might be given.

Later that same night, Beck had quietly taken Robbie aside from the chaos and told him that the Canadian wanted to be sure to stick by his girlfriend's side during all of this, and that he was certain that Andre would want to personally see to Tori. These facts meant that left Robbie to make sure Cat was kept out of the loop on any potential information.

Considering that their theory about the attack on Tori had all but been verbally confirmed earlier at school, this also meant that Robbie was not looking forward to whatever Cat might have to say to him the next day after school when he went to her house to study with her for an upcoming test.

"Hi, hi!" Cat greeted him cheerfully, throwing open the door to her house when he knocked.

"Hey," he answered, stepping inside.

"I've already got a couple of sodas and some cheetos up in my room waiting for us, if you want to get straight to work," Cat suggested.

Robbie was surprised at her apparent focus – she didn't even mention the groups unwillingness to tell her their thoughts about Tori – but he wasn't about to bring it up if she didn't.

But once they were up in her room with the door closed soundly behind them, she did bring it up, just not in the way that he had expected her to.

"I've been thinking about what happened with Tori…" she started, but he cut her off.

"Cat," he begged, "Can we please not have this conversation again? I'm not going to tell you anything, mostly because I'm not sure of anything – no one is – but also because we don't want you to get hurt. Face it, Kit-Cat, you're our little sister and we don't like it when things happen that could hurt you. Telling you would make you hurt."

Cat smiled sweetly, scooting closer to him on the bedroom floor as she pointed out, "Everybody else may think of me as their little sister, but you don't."

"No, you're right," he said with a smile, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "I don't. You're more important to me then a little sister would be, and that is exactly why I don't want to tell you, because I don't want you to get hurt even more than the others don't want you to."

Cat sighed, laying her head over on his shoulder. "Okay," she whispered resignedly.

"'Okay?'" Robbie repeated.

"I trust you; if you don't think that I should have to know, then I won't bother you about it anymore."

"Thank you, Kit-Cat," Robbie replied, placing a gentle kiss onto her hair before releasing his hold on her. "Now, on that note, how about we move onto the French Revolution?"

"Just…" Cat paused before requesting, "Tell me one thing?"

"What's that?" Robbie asked cautiously.

"Tell me that our Tori is going to be okay."

Robbie pulled her close once again, knowing that no matter how much the group managed to shield Cat from, she would still ache for their friend no matter what.

"She will be," he promised softly, knowing that somehow all of them, together, would make sure of it.


	8. Andre

And she was. It took time – and her family and friends.

A few nights – almost every night for the first couple of weeks – Trina woke the sobbing Latina up from terrible nightmares in which she would recount every detail of the attack.

A surprising confession from Jade and a number of deep, consequent conversations with the Goth soon became her second-best comfort.

Enough cupcakes from Cat over time to feed a small army was the way that the still mostly oblivious redhead helped her the most, making sure to deliver that little icing-topped ray of sunshine and a Cat smile whenever she saw that Tori needed it most.

A couple of study sessions with Robbie and Rex when she was feeling so down that she didn't go to school for a day or so always ended with her laughing, her blues long gone by the time the two left the Vega house.

Beck… Beck was just there for her in the same way that he had always been. He knew when her emotions were too close to the surface on any given day, and, depending on what she needed of her friends, would keep his distance from her, warning the others to do the same and thereby giving her the space that she needed to get it back together. If he saw that her friends were what she needed, then he would be there then, too, maybe with just a hug if that was all she needed to pick her back up. Sometimes he would even throw together a spur of the moment bash at her house or in his RV with the others if he saw that she needed a real, cheerful distraction.

Most of the time, though, Andre got the feeling that his best friend would just walk up to him, whisper the day's prescription for Tori into the musicians ear and leave it in his capable hands, trusting him to take good care of the girl that Andre had begun to call his own.

That privilege was one that Andre had just now started being able to exercise, but already, after having waited so long for it; he took full advantage of it. Although now – a couple of months after the attack – they had become a couple, things had been rough between them initially. The fact that they had kissed in the alley, right after  _it_ had happened, had, in a way, made her more frightened of him then of any others. It had taken him cornering her in the janitor's closet one afternoon and demanding to know what he had done wrong – thereby scaring her to death –for her to tell him what was going on in her head.

_"Alright," Andre said in desperation, locking the door to the janitor closet and leaning against it for an extra measure. "Did I do something to you? Say something that you didn't like?"_

_Though he didn't want to show it, Andre was startled by the way that Tori cowered against the opposite wall, as far away from him as he could get. Though it had been three weeks since the incident by Maestro's, it suddenly struck him that this was going to turn out to be the worst move that he had ever made with Tori if this didn't work out just right._

_"Did I offend you?" Andre asked again._

_At last Tori shook her head rapidly._

_"Then what's going on? Why are you avoiding me? I want to help here as much as anyone else does – maybe even more!"_

_"That's just it," Tori whispered, her voice barely audible as she slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor._

_"What are you talking about?" Andre asked, crouching down beside her._

_"You want to help more than anyone else, and I know that you do, because you… you like me."_

_Andre cocked his head, remembering the kiss that they had shared, the "I love you"s that they had exchanged. "Don't you like me too?" he asked._

_Tori thought for barely a second – more about_ should I tell him  _then_ do I like him  _Andre got a feeling – before she nodded her head slowly. "It's just… What I said to you in that alley? The… kiss? I meant it, but I think that it might have been a mistake; I'm not ready to get in a relationship yet – not with you, not with anyone – not after what's happened. But if I am," a small smile barely tilted the corners of her lips upward, but, more importantly, some of the dark emotions vanished from her eyes as she promised him, "I'll make sure that you're the first to know."_

_Andre had smiled back at her, knowing that for now he would have to take what he could get. "Then I'll wait for you."_

And he had waited – for a surprisingly short amount of time. Two weeks later, he had been over at her house, practicing for a performance that they had to do for school when it had happened.

_Andre was sitting at the piano, playing the music while Tori was sitting on the top of the piano singing. The song ended, and as it faded she looked at him, just like she had in Maestro's._

_He saw the moment that thought had flashed through her eyes, and for a split, panic-filled second, he thought that she might run or burst into tears, or both, but she did neither. Instead she surprised him by sliding off of the piano, and coming to sit on the piano bench beside him. Andre hardly dared to breathe as Tori slid her hand into his and leaned her head over onto his shoulder._

_Taking a deep breath, Tori said, just loud enough so that only the two of them could hear, "I'm ready."_

_"Are you sure?" he had managed to choke out, forcing himself not to get too excited yet as he kept his gaze fastened on their intertwined hands. "Because I'm in this for the long haul; if you want me to leave you later, somebody will have to drag me away kicking and screaming."_

_She nodded against his shoulder. "I'm sure."_

_He had looked over at her then, looking deeply into the wide, trusting brown eyes that stared back up at him, and he had seen a person that – though she was no longer perfect, no longer innocent by many of the words definitions – was ready to take another stab at it. She was ready to get back into this game called life and give it another shot. And she wanted him to be there with her as she did it._

_He knew what was coming, but waited for her to make the first move, needing to know that it was okay before he tried something that might scare her away._

_But she didn't look scared. She looked happy. And actually, genuinely peaceful for the first time in seven long weeks._

_"I love you, Andre Harris," she whispered._

_"I love you too," he rasped._

_Only then did she sit up and kiss him – loving him, trusting him, just… his – and both of them smiled._


End file.
